Previously sandwiched cookies have been wrapped by intermittently operating wrapping machines, because of the intermittent supply of sandwiched cookies to the wrapping machine. This intermittent wrapping operation has made production rates relatively low and never exceeding 100 packages of stacked tandemly grouped cookies per minute.
The present operation of stacking and accumulating the groups for packaging is a continuous operation and takes the sandwiched cookies from a conventional two-row sandwiching machine such as is shown and described in the U.S. Pat. to Fay No. 3,119,352, which issued in May of 1960, and utilizes a series of overhead conveyors cooperating with the sandwiching machine conveyors and the wrapping machine conveyor.
This is further attained by elevating conveyor troughs as they extend from the sandwiching machine and bringing depending flights of overhead conveyors between the flights of the sandwiching machine conveyors and travelling at higher rates of speed than the sandwiching machine conveyors and taking at least one row of sandwiches and crossing over the next adjacent row of sandwiches and depositing one sandwich on top of another sandwich, and driving all of the conveyors in preselected synchronization relative to each other to assure the flights move out of the line of travel of the cookies as they decelerate and carrying the sandwiches along the constant speed runs of the conveyor flights.